Manakamana

MANAKAMANA

Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez, Country: US/NP, 2013, 118'

Situated in the Gorkha district of Nepal, the mountaintop Manakamana temple (‘mana’ means heart, and ‘kamana’ wish) is the sacred place of the Hindu Goddess Bhagwati. Since the 17th century, it’s believed that Bhagwati grants the wishes of all those who make the pilgrimage to her shrine to worship her (some even sacrifice goats or pigeons). For most of four centuries, the only way of accessing Manakamana was by way of a three-hour uphill trek. Pilgrims still travel by foot, but most journey today to the shrine by cable car, and this trip gives the form to, and is the subject of Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez’ superb film, something far more complex than it appears to be.

Each of the 11 shots in this rhythmic work takes the length of the 2.8 kilometer trip up or down – lasting a little over nine minutes – beginning in darkness and then revealing the variegated passengers with whom we will spend the next stretch of the journey. Spray and Velez parcel out information piece by piece, assembling an arresting portrait of a place and its people. Shot on glorious Super 16mm celluloid, Spray and Velez’s spellbinding film is a product of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab (which last year brought us Leviathan): it’s structuralist anthropology, a carefully assembled picture of the cultural make-up of those who visit the shrine, both natives and tourists, and a encapsulation of modernization and change in a far corner of the world. (Vancouver international Film Festival)